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N D 



LEARNING CO SAJ 
A BOAT 



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ALICE AND 

OR 

LEARNING TO SAIL 

A BOAT 




ALICE 



ALICE AND 1 


OR 


LEARNING TO SAIL 


A BOAT 


BY 


ONE WHO TRIED 




Urn 


NEW YORK 


PRIVATELY PRINTED 


MCMX 






<*y 



n 



TO MY WIFE 

AFTER WHOM I NAMED 

MY BOAT 



THE following pages contain a 
true account of some of my ex- 
periences in Alice (Class S) dur- 
ing the yachting season of 19 10. 

Crew B. is Beverley R. Robinson; 
Crew E. is Clarence H. Eagle; the 
Skipper is Henry Eagle. 

I am not quite sure that I have got 
the expletives always exactly correct. 
They may occasionally have been 
stronger. G, Do . 

New York, Christmas, 1910. ^**' 



ALICE AND I 

OR 

LEARNING TO SAIL 

A BOAT 



ALICE AND I 

OR 

LEARNING TO SAIL 

A BOAT 



I HAD lived for years on the sea- 
shore, at Sea Gate, during the 
summer months. I had watched 
many a race from the Atlantic Yacht 
Club dock. 1 had seen hundreds of 
ships and barks, sloops and schooners, 
yawls and dories on the bay, the beauty 
of their sails always new and ever 
changing. While I had never sailed 
in a race, I had heard races discussed 
from every possible point of view with- 
out, somehow, having the least desire 
to sail a boat. 

But one day in the fall of 1909 there 
suddenly came the idea that it was 
about time for me to learn to sail, if I 
ever intended to do so, and I mentioned 
the subject to a young neighbor of mine, 
who, in the language of the sea, was 
certainly an A. B. of the first class. 
3 



ALICE AND I 

When I say I mentioned the subject, I 
mean that we went at it, as I recall it, 
about as follows: "If I get a boat, will 
you teach me to sail?" — "Surest thing 
you know," replied my future skipper, 
in terse, undergraduate English. 

That being settled, the question of a 
boat was equally promptly settled, and 
I acquired a well-known small racer, 
of the class called S: (she was Floyd 
Noble's Gunda). The season being over, 
she was laid up for the winter, in regula- 
tion fashion, at the Marine Basin. 

Now I must confess that during that 
winter I often wondered how this new 
venture of mine would work out. The 
drawings I had of my boat, (which I 
promptly rechristened, by the way, 
calling her Alice, after my wife,) con- 
veyed but little to my mind. It seemed 
to me mysterious that so small a hull 
should carry so large a sail — but I had 
the boat; she was over yonder in a big 
shed, dismantled, of course. I used to 
go and look at her, and listen, with that 
counterfeit appearance of wisdom, si- 
lence, to what my companions might 
say of her run, her bilge, and I know not 
4 



OR LEARNING TO SAIL A BOAT 

what else. Anyhow, thought I, I am 
not responsible for this part of her, and 
as most of it will be under water, I 
shall not have to worry over it, as long 
as the lead does not come off. 

Then came an old crony of mine, an 
ancient mariner in experience, and laid 
down in a cheerful but emphatic manner, 
that I had made a terrible mistake — 
that I ought to have got a cat-boat (not 
too large) and when I had learned to sail 
her, to graduate to a larger cat, and pos- 
sibly by 1 9 12 I might be able to try a 
jib and mainsail boat. Encouraging as 
this was to a novice — I was as green as 
the underbody of my boat — I meekly 
suggested that, owning a jib and main- 
sail boat, perhaps I would have to learn 
how to sail one, especially as I did not 
wish to make firewood of her. Besides, 
this suggestion made me think of Mr. 
Winkle's proposed method of learning 
how to shoot partridges, and Sam Wel- 
ler's remarks on the subject, I agreeing 
with Sam. 

In due season spring came. The boat 
was painted, rigged, and put overboard, 

5 



ALICE AND I 

and one day I went over to get her — we 
had moved to Sea Gate for the summer 
— and there I stood on the deck of my 
own boat, and I felt very proud in- 
wardly, but also very much puzzled, I 
must admit. That mast did seem very 
tall, and the boom was certainly huge. 
Then there were all those ropes on the 
deck— halliards, jib-sheets, runners, the 
main-sheet; and, down in the hold were 
more ropes and sheets and tacks, a bal- 
loon jib and a spinnaker, and on deck a 
spinnaker boom, and cleats without 
number. 

As I knew as much about sailing as a 
school-boy knows about Sanskrit, I con- 
fess that I was rather scared at the pros- 
pect, although I had from the very first 
a curious sensation of pleasure. Well 
do I remember my feelings when, after 
making my private signal fast, we first 
hoisted the mainsail and jib and stood 
across the bay for a try-out, and, better 
still, do I remember my first sail on 
Gravesend Bay, in a stiff breeze one 
Sunday afternoon. 1 1 gradually dawned 
upon me that, while a vessel is a thing of 
life, she is also reasonably docile, and 
6 



OR LEARNING TO SAIL A BOAT 

when I learned (as I quickly did) that 
she did not run away with me, and did 
not rear up like an animal, or buck, or 
jump like a wild horse, I must say the 
pleasure I first had grew to be delight, 
and I realized that I was on the road to 
an enjoyment of a kind I had never 
before dreamed of. I had learned the 
charm of life in the Legislature, and in 
other public office; I had followed my 
profession, the Law, for many years 
with very considerable pleasure; I had 
travelled in many lands with endless 
enjoyment; but here there was opening 
to me a new chapter of delight, the ex- 
tent of which was utterly unknown to 
me — and that delight lay in twenty- 
eight feet of deck under my feet, and a 
mass of white canvas over my head. I 
determined to learn all I could, sail as 
often as I could, and get as much fun 
out of it as I could. And I succeeded. 



II 



OF course I was crew in most 
of the races that summer, and 
well do I remember my first 
experience. I had already learned that 
S boats were pretty active things to be 
in, but if anybody had told me that that 
long rope, attached to the boom, and 
called the main-sheet, could get into 
such impossible snarls in the hands of 
a greenhorn, I should have said my 
informant was romancing. Again, I 
never dreamed that it was possible to 
be too quick with that same sheet, nor 
did I know that letting it in or out a few 
inches could make such a difference as 
I was told it would, and learned it did. 
I could see that my skipper was long- 
ing to use some real fo'castle nautical 
terms, and I ventured to suggest that, if it 
8 



OR LEARNING TO SAIL A BOAT 

would help any, he greet me with them. 
But I fear regard for my years restrained 
his youthful feelings, for he refused to 
let out at me. 

Do you who may read this remember 
the first time you jibed at a mark in a 
fair breeze, with a lot of boats near you? 
When you had a chance to cut in ahead 
of an opponent and get to windward? 
I well remember the situation. Says 
my skipper to me: "Now, when I give 
the word, handle that main sheet 
quickly." Acting on these instructions, 
I did so, only to be greeted with a very 
emphatic, "Gosh! I didn't say to do 
it as fast as that. Look out, now, let 
her go! Thunder! not like that. Look 
out for M. &*. F. — Take care of that 
buoy! Curses! Don't foul Bensonhurst!" 
all followed by a very expressive grunt, 
coupled with a smile as, after all, we 
slipped to windward of the others. 

And then, "Now, Mr. D., will you 
please be a little careful with the 
spinnaker. Don't make the sheet fast 
— good heavens, man, what are you 
doing? Don't you see you've got no 
9 



ALICE AND I 

wind in her?" And here was I, with 
one knee against the hardest piece of 
bronze, in the shape of a cleat, I ever 
brought up against, the spinnaker sheet 
around one wrist, and the main sheet 
in my other hand, doing my level best 
to accomplish certain results, which 
were none too plainly fixed in my mind, 
and the reasons for which were none too 
clear to me. And yet it was fun. True, 
my poor seamanship cost us many and 
many a race, but somehow it was fun, 
even lying down on the deck to wind- 
ward, with the coaming just catching 
me in the lower ribs, and the water 
pouring over the weather bow in clouds 
of spray, and now and then a green sea. 
The more I got of it, the better I liked 
it, and the more I wanted. 

There is nothing like it. There is a 
fascination to it that nothing else 
possesses that I have ever tried. And 
then, it looks so easy and it is so hard to 
do well. 

Now, as to clothes — I remember well 
one afternoon Crew B. and I were 
sailing leisurely about the Bay, and the 
10 



OR LEARNING TO SAIL A BOAT 

subject of clothes came up, as we passed 
under the stern of a yacht, well popu- 
lated with ladies in gay attire (as is 
quite proper) and gentlemen in yachting 
togs. They strongly suggested the 
Rocking Chair Fleet, an organization 
which no doubt began with James II of 
England's first experience as a yachts- 
man. Crew B.'s nose went up in the 
air as he descanted on fine clothes be- 
ing the antithesis of yachting. Crew 
B. wore a beautiful old brown soft hat, 
which he carried over his left ear with 
a rakish Hidalgo air as he passed the 
Club verandah where the ladies sat, 
but promptly deposited in the bottom 
of the cockpit when we got aboard 
Alice. He highly approved of my dark 
grey shirt and white suspenders, which 
he said made me look exactly like a 
deck-hand on a Lehigh coal barge. The 
skipper and Crew E. wore captain's 
caps, and very, very old clothes, a 
strictly proper combination, apparently. 
All three, the skipper and Crew B. 
and Crew E. were real sailors, and how 
they pitied me for not knowing how to 
sail! 

1 1 



ALICE AND I 

One morning, early in the season, 
I went for a sail. It was lovely and 
warm with a nice breeze, and a perfectly 
smooth sea. We were to sail a race 
that afternoon, although the skipper 
and Crew B. were away. We — at least 
I — became ambitious to set the spin- 
naker and I got it triced up in pretty 
fair shape. But when it came to taking 
it down, alas! one false move and the 
boom was overboard and everything 
hopeless. I never knew anything to 
pull as hard as that sail did in the water! 
When at last I got a good hold on the 
boom, and started to haul it in, it 
brought up hard against the shrouds 
and, of course, broke, and the sail was 
torn at the same time. And when, after 
much struggling, I got the whole thing 
on deck, I think I felt more like weeping 
than swearing. It was such an awful 
mess! 

That same day, in the afternoon, we 
had another mishap. We had a crew 
who had never sailed on the boat before, 
and, as we went about on one occasion, 
he, instead of letting go the jib-sheet, 
cast off the throat-halliards. Then was 

12 



OR LEARNING TO SAIL A BOAT 

confusion worse confounded! But it 
is by all these things, it seems, that 
sailing is learned, and I could only thank 
my stars that I had not made this par- 
ticular mess. 

On another occasion, we were short- 
handed, and the skipper and I sailed 
alone. It was a hot afternoon, and 
there was not too much breeze, but 
it was puffy. I was crew, and I worked 
on the spinnaker until I had set and 
reset and jibed it I don't know how 
often — it felt like a dozen times. A 
spinnaker is a weird thing, anyhow. 
I had set it and had just got aft, when a 
puff of wind lifted it up and the boom 
slipped off the mast. I jumped for it 
and got it back before any other trouble 
occurred. I had hardly got back to my 
place when the same thing happened 
again, but this time the wind blew the 
spinnaker around the forestay. It was 
a pretty job to untangle, standing on 
the short bowsprit, holding on to the 
forestay with one hand and pulling the 
spinnaker in with the other; but I got 
it in and then I took it down and stowed 
it away. 

13 



ALICE AND I 

And yet of all beautiful sights on the 
water, a fleet of boats, with spinnakers 
drawing well, with not too much wind, 
is probably the most beautiful. Often 
and often I have been tempted to turn 
and watch the other boats, only to be 
called to account by my skipper, for not 
paying attention to my own sails. 

Of course, you know how easy it is 
to make a mooring if you go at it just 
right. You just sail along and when 
the man who is to catch the buoy sings 
out, "Shoot!" you just steer for the 
buoy, heading into the wind. Then, if 
you are not going too fast, and the man 
up forward doesn't miss the buoy or 
doesn't drop it for fear of going over- 
board, your boat stops. But when you 
can't "shoot," or there is a very light 
breeze and a tide against you, there are 
about a dozen things that may happen 
and not infrequently do happen, and 
did happen to me at the tiller. I wish 
I had jotted down on the deck some of 
the remarks made to me by the crew on 
one occasion. "Put your helm down! 
Down! I said, not up! Say, Mr. D.," 
14 



OR LEARNING TO SAIL A BOAT 

(with a true nautical emphasis on the 
Mr.) "can't you see you're going to 
ram Florence?" ("Say, Henry, I don't 
think he knows the difference between 
down and up," says Crew B. to Skipper 
H., sotto voce) — "There, by Jinks, we 
missed it by about a mile." Well, any- 
how, Crew B. was always cheerful, and 
his cussing was always made with a 
smile, so I said nothing, but started in 
on a series of, to me, most complicated 
manoeuvres, and finally reached the 
buoy. 

For the longest time I could not 
remember what to do with the sheet 
after we made fast, and I used to have 
to stop and think out just how the boat 
swung when her helm was moved. 

There were many other things to do 
— putting away the sails after a race, 
stopping up the spinnaker and balloon 
jib, pumping out the bilge-water, now 
and then overhauling the anchor cable, 
greasing the sail-hoops — and all this I 
had to learn from the bottom up. 

To any old salts who read this, what 
I say may sound funny, but I assure you, 
it was anything but funny to me, 

15 



ALICE AND I 

And then sailing to windward — almost 
automatically Crew B. would say, 
"Keep her going, G., keep her going." 
Now B. was a very good sailor, and has 
forgotten more about the game than I 
ever expect to know; but poor B's 
temper used to be sorely tried. As for 
H., he used to take refuge in a pipe 
down in the hold. 

One day, well on in the summer, I 
started a race fairly well, I thought. I 
got a good position — Blue Bill as usual 
being first (that man Moore is a wizard, 
anyhow) — and got to the first mark just 
behind Blue Bill. Says Crew B. to me, 
" You've got him, G., keep he.r a-going. " 
And then, after a few minutes, up she 
goes into the wind, her jib shakes, and 
before I can get her back on her course, 
away goes Blue Bill, and I never get 
anywhere near her again. I can still 
see Crew B.'s look of disgust and hear 
him say, "G., you lost your chance. 
Why didn't you keep her going? Gosh ! " 

As I said before, it looks so easy, but 
it isn't. 

The summer began to draw to a close 
and we had our Atlantic race week, with 
16 



OR LEARNING TO SAIL A BOAT 

no end of pleasure, plenty of wind, mag- 
nificent races, and lots of water aboard. 
I remember especially one nice green sea 
we took aboard, down by buoy 24. 
Another man and I were lying down to 
windward (we each had a cleat, as usual, 
under our last long rib) when we dropped 
off a wave and, instead of rising on the 
next one, struck it so that about a tun 
of water came aboard. It was warm, 
but it hit us a vicious crack, and wet us 
from head to foot. I can still see it 
in my mind's eye distinctly. Another 
time, on rather a quiet day, I was lying 
out to windward, with my head down 
on the deck, when we shipped a small 
wave, my attention being called to the 
fact by about half an inch of water 
slipping under me, and wetting me from 
my chest to my feet. It was an odd 
sensation. 

All these various experiences taught 
me something about sailing and, while 
I do not pretend to know much about 
racing, I did acquire enough confidence 
in myself and my boat not to care how 
hard it blew or how much water came 
aboard. I went out every time I could, 
'7 



ALICE AND I 

with anybody who was willing to take a 
sail with me, and often took my wife out 
for a sail. But an S boat is a trifle 
small and wet for pleasure sailing. 



18 



Ill 



A LAS! the end of the season came. 
/\ My skipper went back to college. 
1 V Yacht after yacht left the Bay, 
and we had only two more races to sail, 
one for the Wilson Cup, which was the 
best of all during the summer. It was 
blowing hard from a trifle East of North, 
a good 30 miles an hour. There was a 
long, ugly roll on down the Bay. The 
only other boats in the race were three 
Q's, — Grey jacket, Joy and More Joy. ( I 
had learned by this time to speak correct- 
ly of Greyjacket, not the Greyjacket) and, 
of course, against these Q's we had no 
possible chance in this weather. But I 
had as crew my friend Bob Spier and 
young Phil Crovat, two real salts from 
Neptune's best selection, and the sport of 
the thing appealed to us very strongly. 
19 



ALICE AND I 

A very unexpected thing added to the 
excitement. A few minutes before the 
start, as we went about on the port- 
tack, the starboard backstay suddenly 
swung clear of the side of the boat! 
The shackle bolt had slipped out and 
gone overboard. For a moment we 
were nonplussed, but Phil got a long 
brass screw out of the ditty-box, Spier 
took a piece of rope and, using the screw 
for a shackle bolt, lashed the stay down 
with the rope, and we were ready to 
cross the line on time. It was easy 
sailing to the Bensonhurst mark, for the 
water was smooth; thence to Fort 
Hamilton with the wind abeam and our 
boom to port, we began to rely solely 
on our broken stay. We got some fine 
knockdowns, which settled one question 
in my mind, and that was, did a boat 
ever heel as much as 45 ? From the 
buoy at the Fort, we started before the 
wind down the Bay to Can Buoy C. 7, 
below the West Bank light, a straight- 
away run of about five miles. 

As soon as we got straightened out 
(fortunately we carried our boom to 
port — it would have been impossible to 
20 



OR LEARNING TO SAIL A BOAT 

have done so to starboard) we set our 
balloon jib as a spinnaker. I, as cap- 
tain, did not dare set our spinnaker, 
fearing the strain on the stay would be 
too great. Away we went like a bird, 
for the water inside the Point was reason- 
ably smooth, the waves at first being even 
and long and unbroken. But as we got 
off Norton's Point and thence down past 
the light, the seas grew worse and the 
wind stronger, for, of course, we were 
well clear of the land. It really was a 
fine sight, and a royal experience, which 
neither of us three will ever forget. The 
way Alice yawed was simply marvellous, 
and, as I had never sailed her on such a 
course in such a wind before, I was a 
good deal put to it to know just how to 
handle her. So when Spier sung out, 
"Look out, man, or you'll jibe her!" 
and I knew jibing meant shipwreck, I 
agreed, when he asked me if I minded his 
making remarks, that I did not. Finally, 
I asked him to take the helm and show 
me how to handle her, which he did, 
and giving the helm to me again, after 
a few minutes, I found his instructions 
bore immediate fruit, for I could catch 
21 



ALICE AND I 

her pretty well before she swung off her 
course. 

But didn't she just yaw! The spin- 
naker would swing aft and then go 
forward with a smash and, as she rolled, 
the spinnaker boom would almost slip 
off the mast. Phil, however, lashed it 
fast, and then the only trouble was the 
mainsail. The boom would go up in 
the air, the sail first all slack up and 
then come down again with a crash that 
was decidedly exciting. However, the 
backstay held, and we didn't jibe. We 
took water over bow and stern, and 
Phil bailed the cockpit with a bucket a 
dozen times. It was a self-bailing 
cockpit but I never saw it work when 
we were under sail. Quite the con- 
trary, — a self-bailing cockpit only works 
in perfectly smooth water, when you 
are not moving. I sat to starboard 
with both feet on the port side of the 
cockpit, holding the tiller with both 
hands and watching the sails with care. 
A couple of tugs passed us bound in, an 
Old Dominion liner passed us to leeward 
going out, nothing happened to us, and 
we got pretty near the buoy. It was a 
22 



OR LEARNING TO SAIL A BOA! 

dark grey afternoon, with a misty 
atmosphere, and an occasional bit of 
warm rain. The Q's had turned the 
mark and were well out over towards 
the Ambrose Channel, beating to wind- 
ward, long before we got near buoy C 7. 
As we approached the buoy (the tide 
was ebbing like a mill-race) I asked 
Spier to take her round the mark. Jibe 
we couldn't, and we tried to make a 
loop, but it blew so hard and was so 
rough, that we decided it would not 
pay to try and beat out past the buoy. 
We could have gone outside the buoy, 
but as we had no chance of saving our 
time allowance, we decided not to take 
the time. It was getting pretty late, 
and we had a long beat home. 

For a while we stood over into 
Princess Bay, then tacked out again, 
making almost no progress. The wind 
kept up and when we again tacked into 
the Bay, we had not gone a mile to the 
northward. Then Spier (who was steer- 
ing) asked me to slack away on the peak- 
halliards; I did so, and the effect was 
marvellous. I then took the tiller and 
stood on a long tack inshore for a good 
23 



ALICE AND I 

half hour, then went about and laid our 
course for home. I made Phil take the 
tiller, as I wanted him to steer her at 
least for a while on this race, but he soon 
gave it up to me. We sailed then on the 
port tack all the way home. It was 
awfully wet, and it was getting rather 
chilly. We were, of course, wet to the 
skin almost from the start. A shift of 
the wind to the westward for about ten 
minutes was of inestimable advantage 
to us, and enabled us to head up so that 
when the wind drew back to its original 
point, we had got so far north that we 
made the finish easily on this one tack. 
(We sailed thus about four miles.) 

The sun was setting as we passed the 
Sea Gate lighthouse. The sky was very 
thick with dark clouds, but over in the 
West the golden light shone through 
some rifts in the clouds in a manner 
most beautiful to behold. And when we 
crossed the finish line, we were beaten, it 
is true, but we had had the best sail of 
the season. The Regatta Committee 
forgave us our failure to round the mark 
which we duly reported, in view of our 
disabled stay, wished us good luck and 
24 



OR LEARNING TO SAIL A BOAT 

advised us to take a drink and get into 
dry clothes, all of which we promptly 
did. 

A few days later I sailed my last race 
in Alice, with Crew B. and Crew E. 
The wind died down and the race was 
called off. We had this consolation, 
that from being last we had, by various 
pieces of good luck, got to be first after 
two hours and a half of drifting. 

I cut my private signal off the main- 
sail and took it home as a souvenir of 
my new experience. Next day I sailed 
as crew on Chubb's Spider (Crew B. was 
on Barstow's Soya) against Soya and 
Greyjacket and Florence. With that race 
the season ended. 

I do not pretend to have learned to 
race; I am far, very far, from having 
learned more than just ordinary sailing; 
but I do not believe anybody got more 
pleasure out of his boat last summer 
than I did, and I doubt if anybody was 
ever more astonished than I, at finding 
out what sailing brought with it in the 
way of pleasure, excitement and interest. 
25 



ALICE AND I 

May Alice in her new owner's hands 
(for I have sold her) and under her new 
name, bring to her owner as much 
pleasure as she brought me! 

And as for myself? I confess that 
Commodore Doremus, Noble, Chubb, 
Barstow, Eagle and others were right 
in their several predictions. Gardner 
is building me a Q. 



26 



LIBRARY OF CONGRESS £ 

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